Benchmarking is a process of comparing one's business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and/or best practices from other industries. Benchmarking involves management identifying the best firms in their industry, or any other industry where similar processes exist, and comparing the results and processes of those studied (the “targets”) to one's own results and processes to learn how well the targets perform and, more importantly, how they do it. The concept of “best practice benchmarking” or “process benchmarking” helps organizations to evaluate various aspects of their processes in relation to best practice companies' processes, usually within a peer group defined for the purposes of comparison. This then allows organizations to develop plans on how to make improvements or adapt specific best practices, usually with the aim of increasing some aspect of performance. Benchmarking may be a one-off event, but is often treated as a continuous process in which organizations continually seek to improve their practices to help them achieve business excellence.
The benchmarking process for storage and loading liquid terminals has generally lacked a systematic approach. With the advancement in IT tools and technologies, the benchmarking efforts can be more cohesive, more aligned towards vision and mission of oil storage and distribution companies. There are several challenges, which are faced during benchmarking exercise, viz. disparate data sources resulting from silo IT implementations, more efforts spent on collecting and compiling data rather than on validating and analyzing them, no standardization of existing processes across corporation, data quality issues, lot of time consuming manual efforts, no standard process for opportunity capture and follow through.
The ability to compare the performance of various industrial terminal facilities such as oil and gas facilities includes terminals which may comprise tank farms (a collection of storage tanks located on the same site) and a plurality of loading bays. A given company may have multiple sites for their terminals. Honeywell International provides a commercially available TERMINAL MANAGER product which is a web-based solution for facilitating, monitoring and controlling the distribution of products in a bulk terminal. The TERMINAL MANAGER monitors and controls all critical processes to ensure smooth and safe terminal operation, with each module designed and engineered for deployment in challenging business environments. Honeywell International also provides an integrated Terminal Automation Solution (TAS) which is a suite that manages product movement through the tank farm, loading bays, and enables enhanced plant safety through integration with fire and gas systems and camera surveillance.